[GandalfTheGrey]

Sorry if this is covered in other threads.

I remember the outbreak of war in 1992. Its funny how black and white it was being presented - the aggressive Serbs attacking the innocent Croats. Milosovic was the devil incarnate. We even had the Croatian president visit Australia as an honoured guest. Then there were the war criminals. War crimes were committed by all sides, yet the only suspects we were interested in were the Serbs and Bosnian Serbs.

Fast forward to 1999 and the evil Serbs are in the spotlight again. Western leaders preached about "never again" would they stand by and allow ethnic cleansing and genocide (neither of which were happening until after NATO bombs started falling on Serb cities).

In the aftermath of Kosovo, the obsession with Serbia has not stopped. The Milosevic circus in the Hague kept us entertained for years - where we thought we were humiliating him, but actually he was having a ball as he made a mockery of the war crimes tribunal. The relentless hunt for Serb (and only Serb) war criminals continues to this day.

So whats the beef against Serbia? Is it just that they are the traditional cousin and ally of Russia? Was the Serbia of the 90s at the crossroads where NATO ended and Russian influence began? Even if thats the case, I find it extraordinary how the many attrocities of Croatia were swept under the carpet - I mean they were allies of the nazis for goodness sake, who carried out their own mini genocides.

[Smilin' Dave]

I remember the outbreak of war in 1992. Its funny how black and white it was being presented - the aggressive Serbs attacking the innocent Croats.

I agree that the history of the Balkans Wars was overly black and white, however the reality is that the Serbs did play a very dominant role in the whole sordid conflict.
- The disintegration of the Yugoslav state was largely Milosevic's doing, and it seems to have all been a power grab.
- What had been a local problem (albeit a potentially serious one) between Serbs and Croatian authorities in Krajina was blown into a regional war by JNA intervention... which favoured the Serbs overwhelmingly.
- Serbs in Bosnia repeat the process, again Serbia supports them.
- By the time NATO intervenes with bombing (having failed to figure out how to fight a multi-front non-conventional conflict), Croatia and Bosnia had actually concluded a peace deal. Needless to say, that took them off the list of targets. This is also why the ethnic cleansing that followed Operation Storm didn't get much coverage.
- In the case of Kosovo, we find the Serbs treating the Albanian population in much the same way the Serbs of Krajina were being treated, and funnily enough the Albanians followed the trend of armed seperatism. While subsequent crimes committed against the Serb community in Kosovo did get some press, it was drowned out by the 'get back at Serbia' mentality.

Does anyone have a reasonable source for 'casualties inflicted' for each faction? I've seen overall death tolls but those don't help when everyone is fighting with everyone. My natural inclination is to say the Serbs were responsible for the most deaths in the conflict, if only because their access to a full military arsenal gave them the means. However, if anyone has something that suggests otherwise I'm interested in seeing it.

There was also a selection bias of sorts going on. Serbia had a regular military and infrastructure to attack, which really appealed to the still fairly Cold War oriented western powers. Croatia and Bosnia's militaries were largely non-existant prior to the outbreak of war, instead they had militia formations and police formations. Also both Croatia and Bosnia were closer to the west, and hence tended to get more sympathetic coverage than Serbia. IIRC Milosevic tended to censor media when he could, which might not have done him any favours with reporters either.

I find it extraordinary how the many attrocities of Croatia were swept under the carpet

Several Croatian and even Bosnian war criminals have been brought before criminal trials. That's not exactly sweeping it under the carpet.

[redcarpet]

They're regarded as trouble makers, by Western leaders. Nationalist diehards. That's not acceptable from an imperialists view, especially if others are inspired by them. A Serbian nationalist started WW1 remember, do you think the Serbian people as a whole will be forgiven for that? Hell no, they'll be punished with another attack as Kosovo's independence has been praised and guaranteed by the US, etc.

[kingbee]

Michael Parenti in To Kill a Nation links it with Serbia's unwillingness to open up their state-controlled markets. Also, as they wanted to keep Yugoslavia together, which in turn would have kept the Balkans' economy fairly state-controlled, and thus that wasn't allowed either.

Several Croatian and even Bosnian war criminals have been brought before criminal trials. That's not exactly sweeping it under the carpet.

But the lack of media coverage is.

Additionally, Milosevic was the only leader tried. Is it really believable that he was the only leader to preside over war crimes?

[Smilin' Dave]

Michael Parenti in To Kill a Nation links it with Serbia's unwillingness to open up their state-controlled markets.

So why did the West wait so long to intervene? It's not like the economy of Serbia suddenly changed in 1994/1995. This also seems an odd theory because Milosevic had been keen of introducing free market mechanisms into the Yugoslav economy.

Also, as they wanted to keep Yugoslavia together

Actually Milosevic and Tudjman (? might have been a different Croat politician) negotiated the final carve up of Bosnia. Milosevic was also a significant obstacle to full Yugoslav intervention in Slovenia*. Milosevic didn't really care about Yugoslavia.

*which makes the JNA intervention in Croatia all the more dodgy.

But the lack of media coverage is.

As I suggested in my post, the lack of media coverage isn't simply the result of some conspiracy/hate but it also reflects a certain selection bias. And it's not like it wasn't in the media at all.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3254890.stm

Additionally, Milosevic was the only leader tried.

Izetbegovic was under investigation but died before anything could come of it. Admittedly I'm not aware of any Croat politicians to be brought before the ICTY.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alija_Izet ... ccusations

[Spike Spiegel]

I mean they were allies of the nazis for goodness sake, who carried out their own mini genocides.

So your theory is their grandfathers were allied with nazis so they're obviously bad guys.
I hate this kind of simplification. There were more Croat volunteers in Partizans then in NDH . As far as I know only members of government and military that were actually alive during WW2 were Franjo Tuđman-President, Janko Bobetko- Chief of the General Staff (highest commander in the military) and Josip Manolić- Prime Minister and they were all members of Tito's partisans.

Is it really believable that he was the only leader to preside over war crimes?

Admittedly I'm not aware of any Croat politicians to be brought before the ICTY.

It's almost certain that both President Tuđman and Secretary of defense Gojko Šušak would be prosecuted in Haag if they hadn't die in '99/'98. The only reason why they weren't prosecuted was because they died.

Also, as they wanted to keep Yugoslavia together, which in turn would have kept the Balkans' economy fairly state-controlled, and thus that wasn't allowed either.

Yugoslavia was in a very bad economic situation during the 80's. It had hyperinflation, stagnation etc. Ante Marković (last prime-minister of SFR Yugoslavia) already had a plan that was written by IMF for liberalization state economy. Some measures where already on the way when war started. It's highly unlike Yugoslavia would remain socialist if it didn't fall apart.

[GandalfTheGrey]

So your theory is their grandfathers were allied with nazis so they're obviously bad guys

You've picked the most flippant and irrelevant sentence of the entire post If you understood the gist of the post you would know I'm not calling anyone the bad guys - just asking why one side is overwhelmingly depicted as so.

[Stipe]

It may have been flippant but it's actually an extremely offensive, extremely inaccurate trope that basically comes directly from the war propaganda of the 1990s.

Croats, as a collective, were not monolithic allies of the Nazis. What actually happened needs to be understood as simultaneously a foreign occupation, a number of simultaneous civil wars, and an array of highly localized ethnic conflicts deliberately engineered by the occupiers and their clients. The Ustashe, the Croatian puppet state the Germans and Italians gave them, and the narrow social base of support which that state had (mostly in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lika) were. The NDH was opposed by another Croatian proto-state, the Anti-Fascist Land Council for the National Liberation of Croatia - the umbrella organization for the Croatian Partisans which eventually won and became today's Croatian state. At the outset of the war, most of its rank and file consisted of Serbs coming from the territory of the NDH while its officers were made up of largely Croat Communists - a consequence of the party's greater strength in the north. Most Croats in the NDH were ambivalent (since their lives weren't directly threatened by the state) but disillusioned by the Ustashe's close ties to fascist Italy, considered during the interwar years as the greatest threat to Croatian national interests, and their surrender of nearly the whole of Dalmatia to Italian rule. In the last few years of the war, Croats joined the resistance in ever increasing numbers. In those places under direct Italian rule (Dalmatia since the invasion, the Croatian Littoral, Croatian areas of Istria since the last war), the story was completely different. The Italians attempted to forcibly Italianize the population in these places and were met with largely Croat, communist-led armed resistance in response. In contrast to the situation in the German-occupied zones in the NDH, the Italian occupiers sought to bring under control by recruiting local Serbian Chetnik units as 'anti-Communist corps'.

The patterns of resistance and collaboration did not break down narrowly on ethnic lines. What was central was the kind of occupation regime that existed in the different places of the former Yugoslavia. The German and Italian occupation regimes were o extremely different character and purpose. I'd go so far as to say that their policies were mutually contradictory. Members of all ex-Yugoslav nationalities fought on either side of the war in varying proportions based on the local conditions. The occupation regimes which determined these conditions cut across national lines. Consequently, you had belated (but eventually considerable once the Partisans demonstrated their staying power and ability to bring order to the regions they controlled) Croat resistance on the territory of the NDH, but massive Croatian resistance in Istria. Likewise, you had variations in Serb and Slovene resistance and/or collaboration in different regions.

That may look like a lot of stuff, but it should be known considering how insistent references to the Second World War are in these discussions, to the point that even you didn't avoid mentioning it when you easily could have.
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With that out of the way...

Continued negative images of Serbia in the western press are largely a hangover from the war and varies considerably in different countries. A lot of it also has to do with the Kosovo situation. The United States in particular is an essentially partisan actor in that conflict and will not admit to the obvious double standard that it has chosen to pursue. Consequently, American media insists on portraying the Serbs as intransigent, myth-obsessed, ethno-nationalists who can't accept their guilt in the war (something which is true for all sides, really), or that they've lost Kosovo. Another pole is the Netherlands, where there is a sense of guilt and responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre, in which the Dutch peacekeepers present essentially failed to do anything other than stand by as spectators. Consequently, the Dutch have been extremely insistent on the war crimes front and demand that Ratko Mladic (one of the two main architects of the war in Bosnia and the individual responsible for Srebrenica) be found and turned over to the Hague for trial.

In Croatia, the situation is somewhat different. As Spike noted, Tudjman died in office and Susak died even earlier. However, Croatia has already complied with the rest of the ICTY's extradition requests, with the most high profile one being the arrest of Ante Gotovina some years ago. A number of other persons are also being sought by the Croatian judiciary for crimes, notably the prominent politician Branimir Glavas who was brought up on charges of murder and torture of local Serbs in eastern Croatia. The guy fled to BiH however and the extradition request was turned down for some reason.

A final important factor is that NATO and the Americans themselves bear culpability for what happened during Operation Storm, which led to the flight of ~250,000 Croatian Serbs. The Americans basically trained, equipped, helped plan, and monitored the operation with the hope that it would "simplify the map" and force the Bosnian Serbs to negotiate. They're not eager for that to be talked about too much, so Gotovina is partially a convenience for them.